


Hell in a Handbasket

by enchantedsleeper



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: Brexit, Crack, Even Crowley despairs of UK politics, Fields of Wheat (UK Politics RPF), Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 07:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19330303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enchantedsleeper/pseuds/enchantedsleeper
Summary: Crowley gets drunk and rails against the state of UK politics in 2016 - and in particular, the appointment of a certain Prime Minister who is rather fond of wheat...(An appropriately cracky follow-up tofields of wheatby gandalfspace)





	Hell in a Handbasket

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [fields of wheat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19328557) by [gandalfspace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gandalfspace/pseuds/gandalfspace). 



> You know, I've been preparing to jump into creating fic for Good Omens ever since I finished watching the show - but I never expected that my first work in the fandom would be so unapologetically cracky xD
> 
> But after reading the hilarious [fields of wheat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19328557), I got this mental image of Crowley drunkenly railing against the state of UK politics, and... a sequel was born. It'll make a smidge more sense if you read gandalfspace's fic first, but... I also can't guarantee a lot of sense is there to be made xD
> 
> I tagged with both the book and TV fandoms because it was more inspired by the TV show, but I decided to use the book timeline (i.e. Crowley and Aziraphale averting the apocalypse in 1990) so that this could take place afterwards.

Crowley hadn’t expected, after they averted the Literal Apocalypse, that the world would go to hell in a handbasket anyway.

Well, okay, human nature being what it was, it was always going to happen eventually – but he hadn’t expected it to happen so _quickly_.

He was being melodramatic, Aziraphale always told him when he started to rail against the state of UK politics. Things would “work themselves out”. The country had “been through worse” – they’d both been around for the horrors of two world wars, followed very swiftly by what seemed like the planet’s imminent demise via nuclear warfare. And _then_ Armageddon.

But Crowley honestly didn’t think he’d lived (metaphorically speaking, as an immortal demon) through a political period more ridiculous than this. First they elected an actual, literal pig fucker to the highest office in the goddamn country. Said pig fucker then proceeded to initiate a disastrous referendum to appease the most extremist faction of his party, a referendum that boiled an incredibly, monumentally complex issue (membership of the European Union) down to two choices, “in” or “out”. Crowley couldn’t even have come up with that one if he’d tried.

And after personally driving the train that was the United Kingdom spectacularly off the rails, David Cameron, Rogerer of Swine, promptly threw up his hands and resigned, leaving the entire mess for someone else to deal with. Then followed three weeks of absolute, parody-level political backstabbery, from which the eventual victor was – and again, Crowley could not have made this up – Theresa bloody May. Theresa “love affair with fields of wheat” May. (What was it with the Tories and having inappropriate relations with unsuspecting non-human entities?)

He thinks that going to hell in a handbasket – literally, physically going down to hell inside a handbasket – would have been less of a bizarre rollercoaster than this.

Which was why Aziraphale found him that evening in the shittiest, cheapest bar he could find within stumbling distance of his apartment (it would defeat the object if he sobered up to drive or walk home), surrounded by empty glasses, staring morosely at the television screen displaying a ticker tape about Theresa May’s pledge to take up the cause of the “just about managing”.

“Load of absolute horseshit,” Crowley muttered, draining the last of his… he couldn’t actually remember what alcohol he was drinking. Or taste it. He’d sort of been working through the lot. “How c’n you claim to represent the “jus’ about managing”… when you did this t’the country?” He gestured vaguely at the bar, somehow in that gesture encompassing the various political ills of the past several decades.

“Hear, hear,” said the barman, and topped up Crowley’s glass. Crowley liked this place because he didn’t even need to use demonic influence to get free refills. He just needed to rant about politics in the right way.

But as Crowley reached for the glass, a fair, perfectly-manicured hand closed around it. Crowley raised bleary eyes to greet his partner’s twinkly gaze.

“I’d say I’m cutting you off,” said Aziraphale, “but I think we’re past the point where it would do any good.”

“I c’n sober up if I want to,” Crowley asserted, which was true, although not in the way that the bartender (who snorted in amusement) took it to be.

“What’s got you in a snit this time?” Aziraphale asked, settling himself comfortably onto the neighbouring barstool and looking closely at Crowley. “You don’t usually get yourself in this state unless you’re either worried or feeling guilty about something.”

Crowley would have grumbled about Aziraphale’s uncanny ability to read him, but it was pretty pointless by now, so instead he just waved his glass vaguely in the direction of the television screen. Aziraphale squinted at it.

“Theresa May… Theresa _May_ … where do I know that name from?”

Crowley stared into his empty glass (he’d downed it at some point, he couldn’t remember when) and waited for Aziraphale to make the connection.

“Oh!” Aziraphale said suddenly. “Isn’t she the one who…” He lowered his voice conspiratorially, even though the bartender could definitely still hear every word, “made all those crop circles in Sussex with her friends? The fields of wheat girl?”

Crowley nodded morosely and tried to down the contents of his empty glass. Some more Unspecified Liquor hastily materialised for him to down.

“My dear, didn’t you say that you might try to make her Prime Minister one day?” Aziraphale asked, sounding slightly scandalised.

“It’s not my fault!” Crowley stated, much louder than he had intended to. “Honest to G… to Satan, Aziraphale, I didn’ do this.”

“Might’ve given her a leg up here an’ there in the early days…” he went on, muttering into his glass. “Jus’ for the fun of it. Wasn’… wasn’ meant to do any harm. Then I los’ track, ‘n the next thing I knew, she was having vans driven around the country telling immigrants to go home.”

Aziraphale shook his head sadly. “You mustn’t blame yourself for this, dear boy. Aren’t you always saying that human beings are capable of coming up with far more creative forms of evil on their own than the forces of Hell could ever devise?”

That sentence had far too many words in it for Crowley to parse in his drunken state. He stared blankly at Aziraphale, who sighed and shook his head again.

“This wasn’t your doing, Crowley,” he said, and got off his stool so that he could slide Crowley’s arm around his shoulders. He laid a thick wodge of notes on the bar, ignoring Crowley’s mumble of “S’fine, s’on the house.”

“And anyway,” he added encouragingly as he helped the demon towards the door. “I know you. You’ll find a way to put things right.”

* * *

 

**One year later**

“What’s the naughtiest thing you ever did?” ITV presenter Julie Etchingham asked Britain’s second ever female Prime Minister in a television interview for the _Tonight_ show.

“Oh goodness me.” Theresa May pulled a face. She had thought that she’d made it through the most probing parts of the interview, and now she found herself thoroughly put on the spot. “Well, I suppose… Gosh. Do you know, I’m not quite sure?”

“There must have been a moment,” Etchingham pressed.

What answer could she give that would instantly endear her to the public and shatter her ‘robotic’ press image? As May searched for an answer – any answer, even a fictional one – she found that all she could think of was those heady days during her childhood in Sussex, running through fields of wheat in an elaborate circular pattern. But that would be a terrible response to give. She had to think of something better.

“I have to confess,” she found herself saying, almost without her conscious bidding, “when me and my friends sort of – used to run through the fields of wheat… the farmers weren’t too pleased about that.”

Oh good gracious. She’d said it.

Why had she said it?

Several hundred miles away, a demon named Crowley cackled in triumph and pointed at the TV screen. “That one?” he said to a gently amused Aziraphale. “That one _was_ my doing.”


End file.
